Brian Bolland: The Apex Edition follows Rebellion’s successful Zenith Apex Edition, which collected Steve Yeowell’s stunning artwork from his and Grant Morrison’s superhero series. These of his covers were "a mixture of ink linework, color washes, airbrush and then, eventually, areas painted in poster color by my wife, Rachel," which ultimately saw her have significant input on some covers, with Bolland acknowledging that some of his final Animal Man covers were mostly her work. Gibbons joined Carlos Ezquerra in "jumping into 2000AD feet first with issue 1 (or Programme, later Prog 1). Co-edited by Masters of British Comic Art author and artist David Roach and Rebellion graphic novels editor Oliver Pickles, many pages of Bolland’s 2000 AD work has already been located and scanned, brought together from private collections in the US, UK, France, and beyond.

Noting his enjoyment of Berke Breathed's Bloom County, Bolland's own strip wasn't always humorous, reflecting Bolland's own mood at times. But Brian continued to improve with each new strip and illustration, and happily the book includes much of his best work from the ‘80s, which represents Brian at the peak of his powers. It was the beginning of the '80s boom when people like Frank Miller were being treated like stars and refashioning the look of the books they were in. Learning to draw comics, however, was an art he self-taught, with Bolland eventually writing a 15,000-word dissertation in 1973 on Neal Adams – an "artist [his teachers] had never heard of. In fact, these books weren’t Rebellion’s first venture into this genre - their Zenith: Phase One Apex Edition had been published several years earlier, collecting together Grant Morrison’s and Steve Yeowell’s postmodern superhero.He states that, while this leap means that he no longer produces any paper-based artwork (a profitable sideline for many artists who sell on their original work to collectors), he was certain on abandoning pen and paper. Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland: Masterpiece Edition - Acclaimed as one of the greatest artists of his generation for his work on such titles as Camelot 3000 and Batman: The Killing Joke, Brian Bolland's work on Judge Dredd helped catapult both the series and Bolland himself to international acclaim.

When we produce inked artwork, the intention is to have the artwork reproduce in sharp black and white. The Judge Dredd art of Brian Bolland is regarded as some of the greatest comic art of the Eighties, and helped catapult both the series and Brian Bolland himself to international acclaim, leading him to work on such titles as Camelot 3000 and Batman: The Killing Joke. This is where those friends-of-a-friend connections became so useful, leading to some incredible discoveries, including one of Brian’s earliest color covers which looked as fresh as the day it was painted. In 1985, as a known fan, Bolland was approached by Nick Landau to select stories and draw covers for two Titan collections of the strip, with a third design going unpublished. Multiply that by 100, since few collectors owned more than a single page of Brian’s art, and you’ll get some idea of the scale of the project.I'd been working for DC for a few years, and they had a fairly tolerant attitude to my slow pace of work. Even so, he "was always struggling to get the last eight or ten pages finished," and was occasionally helped by friends, both from his "Norwich School of Art days," Gibbons and future- 2000 AD and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist Kevin O'Neill. This page was later reprinted in the Outrageous Tales From the Old Testament volume, which included works from Moore, Hunt Emerson, Gaiman, Gibbons, and Dave McKean, although Bolland's name was left off the cover. Gribbons creates an army of sentient corporate mascots through his experiments on human brain matter, including the Jolly Green Giant.

Similarly, collectors in more remote locations seemingly had no way of reaching a scanner and the whole process seemed almost impossibly exotic and out of reach. Along with some choice Dredds from his Dark Judges and "Block Mania" episodes he found most of his charming Walter the Wobot one-pagers, some fascinating unused cover prelims, and even his first-ever 2000 AD cover, all of which bumped the page count up past our wildest expectations. As of this writing the release of the book is a few weeks off, 1 the McMahon volume has now become two—one of which is largely complete and ready to be designed—and we’re looking at bringing out more, devoted to other 2000 AD artists, if the fans want them.Paul: You obviously eventually moved on from 2000AD at a time when many 2000AD creators were discovering publishers further afield. In many cases the owners were happy to help but were in the middle of a lockdown, be it in in Barcelona, Brisbane, Brighton or Belfast. It helps to try and imagine your cover is in a whole bank of thirty or more and you need it to stand out. Having just finished my Masters of British Comic Art book, which included a small mountain of original art scans, I’d certainly built up a good network of art collecting contacts, so it seemed only fair to help out.

With both versions of the Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland Apex Edition now sold out ( though with very limited extras launching on 2000AD. Around this time, Titan Books were trying to launch a line of comics written by Alan Moore, including a Batman Meets Judge Dredd one-off by Moore and Bolland. I don’t think the format is necessarily the best way to read a comic strip, it’s perhaps too large and unwieldly for that.we [Bolland and Morrison] talked about trying to make the covers look different in some way, and when DC decided to number the issues backwards [from 12 to 1; to count down to the Millennium], that set me thinking. The name ‘Green Giant’ was first used in 1925 for the brand “Green Giant Great Big Tender Peas” and the figure of the Giant came along a few years later. With Brian’s art being so attractive and highly prized, it’s understandable that many collectors had them mounted in frames, which proved to be the bane of my life as framed art couldn’t be scanned in the sort of clarity we needed.